The present invention relates to data processing and more specifically to data structures in data processing systems.
In a relational database, data is stored in different tables. These tables may be bound together using referential integrity. For instance, data may be split into fact and dimension tables. The dimension tables define different key/value tuples with unique keys and descriptive values. The fact tables then reference this information.
Where tables reference other tables, the time taken for query execution is not optimal. Joins between tables increase the amount of processing required for a query.
Hybrid tree array databases have been contemplated. Such a database provides flexibility, allowing fast key searching typical of a tree database, and sequential searching of all data fields typical of an array database. It does not, however, address the problem of querying data stored over joined relational database tables.